Bremen's Bürgerpark, as many other "people's gardens" in Germany, was born out of an urban necessity to provide the growing population with a place of tranquillity and encounter. Many such "people's gardens" developed out of the elegant gardens of the local nobility, but were oriented to conventional landscape gardening and changed only little in the course of the years.

However, the Bürgerpark grounds were laid out according to a concept drawn up by Wilhelm Benque in which Benque aimed at harmonizing different landscape gardening styles. The geometric regularity of the central grounds around Parkhaus is broken up by an idealized "natural landscape" in which winding paths repeatedly offer visitors new views and thus new impressions.
Bürgerpark is harmoniously interspersed with watercourses and small lakes and ponds that not only create a varied forest setting and allow visitors to "breathe", but also constantly convey new impressions through the "plant scenery", especially when viewing the park from the water. These watercourses, lakes and hidden ditches also serve to irrigate and drain the park.
The "idealized" forest that surrounds the so-called central grounds was laid out by Benque in sections separated into deciduous trees and conifers and with groups formed according to the main varieties of tree.

Since the establishment of Bürgerpark each park director has endeavoured to preserve this concept. This traditional maintenance of the park reached its high point in 1984 by virtue of its classification as a garden monument and with the introduction of an advisory board of experts that supports the park administration in matters pertaining to conservation.